


The Agonising Ouroboros of a Beautiful Friendship

by Etnoe



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Animal Sacrifice, Harm to Children, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dickie's been haunted by a demon named Raylan his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Agonising Ouroboros of a Beautiful Friendship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/gifts).



> Whoops, I wanted to finish this much earlier. Hope you enjoy it, spock!
> 
> * * *

"Now, Dickie, you like talking, we both know that." Hot fingers on his cheek. Raylan's frown lightens to a look like a dog's done its party trick properly, and Dickie finds himself shivering again instead of feeling so very still and heavy. Living instead of dying. "So answer me this: how's all this lying around and bleeding any kind of fun?"

Dickie's throat bobs and his lips waver. "Ain't." And a gasp; that's all he manages.

It's loud to him and it looks like it's loud to Raylan, despite the noise of the prison riot around them, the whooping and screaming, the vibrating through the floor under Dickie's back as people run and drop.

"Right! You got it right, you sorry streak of piss, though don't think it's an idea you should get used to. This isn't how you work. Lying down like you got the sense to know when to quit - not as I know my Dickie Bennett.

"Frankly, this isn't all I got going for me," Raylan says, and brings him further back from the brink. Hot, hot fingers, and a plainly panicked statement spoken all casually: "I can't really let this be all I get."

He is brought back for the demon's own purpose and pleasure, Dickie yells in his own mind, for the demon's need of him. The dark of the day is bright and the shouting is understandable again, warnings from the guards and the last threats and contrary hoorays from his fellow prisoners, instead of him being laid out on the ground with his sight going and all sound hissing in his ears.

All when he'd been laid flat and bleeding for Raylan's little joys, too, and that for all his life since childhood.

*

"Not pieces, not pieces," Dickie makes sure to say and keep saying.

Coach tells him, "All right, kid, your leg's still, it's not _that_ level of bad... You'll be all right." Because he doesn't have a clue.

"I don't see why not take it that step further." A grin in the air speaks with a voice as clear as Coach's. "I told you--"

"No it's _not_ funny," Dickie yells, hitting out, everything he's trying to say turning into a wordless scream. Someone takes hold of the swatting hand and tells him things will be okay. Where's Mama?

"Look at this from my perspective. The crying, wriggling, the yelling - that's all comedy gold! How to make it more so? Simple. Get something done about those last couple of bits of meat and sticks that are keeping the leg on." A little laugh that went on and on. "You could do like a dance with Bit One holding on to Bit Two of you."

By now the pain's so bad that Dickie can only whisper. "What else, God, anything I, I, I can, if I just-- no souls, no dying, Raylan, anything that's something else, but my leg, Raylan, please--"

Silence.

Silence.

There's other people talking all around and Mama's voice is louder - when he turns his head, he can see a blur through his tears that looks like her closing in - but the demon's voice is gone and it's all he can listen to.

"Bargaining, huh," Raylan says. "Kid's trying to make a deal with me, and get smart about what's on offer... You're lying there crying, and you're trying to pull this off?" He's impressed. Or mad. But he's not laughing. This is the first time Dickie's heard that voice without a little laughter to it, and hope rises up in him so wild he stops crying.

Dickie gets to keep his leg. Pretty much. He's not in actual pieces, anyway, and he doesn't doubt it could have happened right there on the baseball field - somebody could have been carrying a knife, and Raylan could easily set them in a mood to go wild with it for a minute or two. Even if he's not going to heal, it's better than _that_. Some people had asked and gossiped about what he'd been yelling, but most everybody had decided it was because of the pain.

Raylan gets to start bargaining with him. Before, Raylan would laugh and Dickie would clam up or cry, terrified either way. Now ... they talk some.

*

There are dogs barking, hunting after Dickie's scent. More than that, some of the police holding on to those leashes probably know the area well enough to be aware they ought to check this patch of land Dickie's sitting on, which rests between two streams and is awfully handy for a fugitive who might want to take a couple of dips in the water to hide his scent, then find a freer direction to take off in. He hadn't known about it until Raylan led him here, but it's the police's job to pick up on that sort of thing, isn't it?

"Way out, way out, is there a way out... Well, no, from the way things are shaking out, I do believe the answer is: there's none." Dickie tries to crane his neck to see further down the hill and to stay out of sight behind an outcrop of rock at the same time.

"Relax," Raylan snaps, angry enough that what's visible of him wavers like the air above concrete on the hot days. "The dogs won't come anywhere near me. Most humans won't be eager to head on over, either."

"It is in fact _a touch_ of a predicament, Raylan, to have been driven, yes, driven out of the hospital while my mind was not up to resistance. To be left in the middle of an escape that I didn't want at all, whatsoever--"

"Uh-huh," Raylan cuts in. He'd got a lot of satisfaction out of how little enjoyment prison had had to offer to Dickie, laughing and laughing.

"Sarcasm! Sure, that's helpful at this dire point in time. Helpful like setting me on this path leading directly to a longer sentence start with, in a prison that you worked up into wanting to eat me alive!"

"These people won't be hard to keep busy," Raylan says. The words are cranked into the air on rusted machinery, coming out reluctant and grinding. "Get out, Dickie. Find yourself a car and pick a direction. I can keep them off your back long enough for you to get somewhere safe. And after that I'm sure I can still find you."

There are four big facts about Raylan: demon, dead, can't leave Harlan, can only talk to Dickie. Whatever accident of fate brought the latter two things on, they've stuck for years and neither of them know the least hint of a cure for the case. Maybe Dickie inherited him from Daddy; it seems like the kind of situation that involves blood. While it's clearly not what Raylan's ever wanted, it's equally clear he's got well-used to the having.

Dickie could leave Harlan, but speaking technically it was also possible that he could go to the moon. Even if he didn't leave he could stop talking to Raylan, but quite aside from ensuing pissedness, if he did that he'd lose the hints that let him do the wrong thing at the right time, and those secrets about other people that are so handy for biding his time with. He and his family would lose out on so much. On sheer, incredible opportunity...

"All right, yeah, getting away. Yeah. Do the needful and I'll be right off," Dickie says. And as he moves away he can't help but admit: "I actually - there's this possibility that exists - it's an idea I've been sitting on, Raylan, I'm not even going to tell you because - you wait and see."

"You - _an idea_?"

Thunder's coming from that second on, building fast - and for a few seconds the storm's following Dickie along with a livid lack of surprise, until he hisses at Raylan to follow his own damn plan. The storm settles more towards downhill to meet the trackers, and Dickie climbs upwards to where he thinks he might find a path he remembers.

*

"Black chicken." Raylan points it out with a flicker - it squawks as scratches its way across the yard - then turns his attention expectantly to Dickie. 

"What do you want with it?"

Dickie is to slit its throat and walk with the corpse, scattering feathers, around as much of Harlan County as he can manage. Around all of it, according to Raylan, but Dickie feels his leg cramping at just the thought, and besides that he'll admit that one of the accusations that always comes up in family arguments is true: he's obstinate. There's no way he's going to hike the county border.

He crosses his arms and shifts further down in the cushions on the rocking chair, setting it gently back-and-forth and creaking on the porch floorboards. Doyle's asleep on the other side of the house, and no one else is home, so he hasn't bothered lowering his voice for this conversation. "The black one," he says.

"Yup. Right over there." Another flicker and squawk.

"Do black things taste better to demons? It's always what you hear that you all have an inclination to. Can't imagine that just the feathers make much difference to flavour, though. Is it about the look of the thing--?"

"Make sure there's no silver in the knife." Raylan has a way of making words settle with a thud, like a boot stamped down on a reaching hand. It doesn't even seem worth it to ask out of what kind of buried treasure he's meant to have dug up a silver knife.

He's got to make words do a lot of work, really, with there being so little of him. Like Dickie does, too, talking other kids down if they get ideas about pushing him around and one of his brothers isn't with him. Is Raylan going to be able to talk to other people, too, after this business with the chicken? Asking what it's for is pointless. Raylan will get pissed and go off for some time, and then come back, ask the same thing, and continue being tight-lipped about the consequences of most anything he says.

When Dickie takes the black chicken, he takes a red hen, too. Once they're both dead, Raylan says musingly, "I'd be pissed you don't seem to listen to a word I say. But you don't seem to listen to hardly anybody if it's not yourself, so I'll give this argument up right now."

Dickie's sure not going to - the chickens go in a plastic bag and then into a backpack, and he and Raylan carry the argument along much of the beginning of the route.

There's a path most of the way, which makes things easier, and Dickie had decided to give up on appearances and dug up a grandpa or great-grandpa's walking stick in the house. Luckily he had some short forefathers and it pretty much fits his height. When he and Raylan are out of sight of other people, he reaches into the bag with one hand, gloved, and hauls out what he can without looking.

"Feeling full yet, Raylan? I've paid some attention, and I do know what it is you're after." (Actually, it's hard to tell if he wants the actual death or threat thereof, the fear that had been involved, the blood that still was, or maybe all of those.) "And there is still a little scrap of doubt within me that _colour-coding's_ going to make a difference to the power in it."

"You want more explaining to do to your ma about why it's two chickens gone instead of one, you just go ahead."

Sometimes the places they walk through go silent for a second or two. Sometimes there are marks in the earth, on the trees, on what's left of a wall.

In one near-flat patch sheltered by trees on all sides except for one rocky slope, something ... is missing. No flies, Dickie realises, starting to breathe faster, and then wonders why he's expecting flies at all. Especially there, at the bottom of the slope where the rocks look sort of loose...

Dickie's not sure what he's thinking yet through the whirl in his head but Raylan's already replying, "Yeah, but chicken's better." A hand on his back pushes him onward. He decides not to think about it much more.

There's a spot where all the leaves on all the plants, down to the blades of grass, are oddly dark - even shading to black. Dickie is too tired and sore to care about the colour of the feathers he chooses to encourage that trend with, but on the way back home, he passes another cluster of trees and grasses where everything looks unusually red-brown for this time of year.

"I knew it!" he says out the corner of his mouth, because there's a car going by on the road. Raylan sighs. "It didn't need to be the black one at all!

*

For a change Coover's the one laughing for not much reason, though Raylan's over. Coover's been on a happy high instead of getting lazier or prone to punching, which helps make the evening fairly pleasant. Why, Dickie's hip has pretty much stopped aching too, despite the winter cold in the air.

Coover comes to stand in front of Dickie, who is sitting on the couch watching TV. "Who's your friend?" he asks, waving at the opposite end of the couch. "You leaving space there, Dickie?"

There is space for another person, when usually Dickie lies with his bad leg on the couch. "Why, sure, of course. You go on and sit down, brother. Welcome to it."

This is one really happy high. Coover giggles and snickers. "Not for any friends you got? Invisible ones? Imaginary ones?"

Dickie gives him a sunny smile and pats the open seat cushion. For a while longer Coover needles him about talking into air, crying about accidents that have nothing to do with him, and everything the family usually doesn't talk about.

"I'd kill him if he weren't the exact type to get himself killed without much outside interference," Raylan says.

 _You shut your ass up about him_ , Dickie thinks. It probably doesn't get through in the specifics but Raylan does seem to feel the violence with the thought, as he makes a sound like letting out a breath, impressed. Coover gets bored with teasing and sits down with them to watch TV, and they all quiet down to share a reasonable amount of peace, all things considered.

Dickie had actually left the space on the couch for Raylan, earlier, but he doesn't feel particularly dumb for doing it even though he's been caught out at it. As Raylan has dryly said a few times, he is a ghost of great presence.

The thing is, a lot of that presence is made up of concentrated spot of heat.

And the cold has been making Dickie's hip ache something fierce.

So Dickie had moved over to sit right on top of Raylan, hours ago, and it feels like an honest to God balm.

It's also awkward and neither of them pushes the equilibrium by talking much to each other, or to Coover. Dickie enjoys the heat, and Raylan holds his anger back. He's grown surprisingly good at it over the years.

He badly wants to truly move, Dickie suspects. And talk with a mouth and throat and voice box, and probably eat chicken or chicken feathers or black cats. Raylan doesn't get further than making Dickie's fingers tap on the couch arm, snapping up seconds' worth of pain from his hip, or feeling a mouthful of beer hit Dickie's tongue. As trades go, it might be fair. Yeah, sure, it's fair enough.

Quietly Dickie decides that it's a funny thing to live between thinking you'll never be afraid again and that you'll be afraid all your life. He's going to avoid being the next person to giggle about nothing much, though.

*

"He's real, Mama, I swear it..."

She's already stopped working with the cashbooks she was busy with when he came in crying, and now she shifts her work over to the side of the table. "Dickie, if there's an actual demon after you, the answer's simpler than a lot of the troubles you might find yourself in. You pray and keep yourself safe. This isn't something I can get rid of for you. It's up to the good Lord above."

"I try that, Mama, I pray and pray all the time, and I try to be good and he doesn't even bother to tempt me off that path, he just drops some hurt on me any kind of way, or makes it so I have to do something that's still bad even if it's not as bad as the other choice, and I..."

Mama is the only person who believes him - even at church, they were just nice to him after he told of his troubles. She doesn't believe Raylan exists, he's pretty sure, but she also doesn't act like Dickie's crazy. Instead she's fixing him with a look as if trying to figure out what's after him, because she's sure there's something.

"Or it could be that it's up to you," she says. "The Lord helps those who help themselves. This problem might be one of those that you're going to have to lick yourself, baby. You think of way I can help and I'll do it - tell me one thing I can do and I will. But baby, if you're in trouble and you're the only one who really knows about it..."

Maybe she expects to hear about an older boy who's got him scared so shitless he can only tell dumb stories about it. Over the next few weeks she watches him and spoils him rotten, and spoils the other two in a spill-over. Everything's happy, in a layer over the feeling that he's waiting to take his last breath and there's nothing like salvation.

Eventually, he can think without starting to panic about what his mother said, that his is a trouble that only he knows. He's the only one who can talk to this demon. Dickie might be the only one who can handle it.

He decides that he is.

*

There's not a single sign of the police and their dogs, and Dickie's part of the plan is going well too.

It's not hard to retrace the path he'd walked with Raylan, years ago. Dickie finds the places where the surroundings had turned strange - and still were; silent or the wrong colours or simply with a feeling of change to them. After a while he doesn't bother sticking to the old path and tries to go directly to the strange places. His bandages from the hospital cover still-broken skin and he works them looser to get at the blood, leaving drops of it behind. Raylan might be trapped here, but that doesn't mean it doesn't offer him something too.

He goes further. Now it's outright easy.

The walking goes on longer than he should be able to do it, and the people he passes stand out loud and bright before he's laid eyes on them while they pass him like they're looking and can't find him. He ends up at the mines, and laughs at the heat and work and darkness to it - of course! Raylan never brought him here for any of the favours he asked of Dickie. But it's so dark, and it's so easy for people to die down there. It's like it's screaming the history of every one of them. The palm of one hand is entirely red, and he walks in, and on, and feels his way deeper down.

*

When it's done:

Raylan appears on the world in human form, bare-ass naked, and it happens to be while he's sitting on a bench in front of a park and across from a restaurant. Dickie later finds out that someone he knows had recorded a cellphone video of a policeman getting Raylan off the street, and watching it is among the happiest moments of his existence. So that's where Raylan's hat comes from - handed over by the policeman to cover his damn dick up from the lunchtime crowd.

Dickie becomes what he knows that he always had to, and Raylan realises it the moment he enters the Bennett yard and claps eyes on him.

"Horns." Raylan's voice is almost gone with the apparent pain it gives him to dig his fingers through Dickie's hair, because the horns are, fortunately, stubby enough to be hidden in it. "A _tail_. Dickie, _for fuck's sake_. You think I or anyone else goes around like this?" He pats Dickie's ass in trying to get at the tail curled up hidden under a long sweatshirt.

"Hey, hey, watch it," Dickie says, not really bothered. "I could twist that hand right off, should you get overeager with it."

Raylan grabs him with a fist twisting his sweatshirt. "And I could kill you as dead as I could before, and then you might end up in the same predicament that I spent decade upon decade in..."

The anger fails him, where before he would at least have chosen to swallow it down. Raylan's thankful. It has got to burn.

"You'd do good with a gun," Dickie says, already catching the taste of gunpowder. "I can tell. Listen to me right and you'd do well working with Mama, too. Nobody's looking for me anymore - nobody even knows to! You and I, we took care of all that with what we did, so what we could accomplish now, Raylan..."

"Now you're putting weapons in my hand," he says, like it's a cause for distress.

Oh, God, Dickie thinks - he can still do that without lightning striking him down or anything. Doesn't all humanity have sin in them, anyway? He's only taken on a little more. He's only given some of his salvation away - and isn't that an act of utmost kindness?

Oh, God. Raylan in front of him, his voice no longer a thin whine or a soft, gnawing secret. Looking like he's around Dickie's age but without likeness to him otherwise, bigger and broader. He could still kill him. He knows how Dickie could fight back. But, oh God, it doesn't do anything to make him look less breakable; his own power wants to turn on him, like it misses him and this is the best way to return. Oh, it is.

"I can't tell..." Raylan glares, dissatisfied.

_When you're scared anymore_ , he had intended to say. Dickie knows it and he laughs. He could rub it in, he could admit that he doesn't always know himself - he's so out of practice. He also wants to just put an arm around Raylan's shoulders, so he does, giving him consoling pats on the chest and laughing a little.

Raylan feels cool to the touch now, and stares down at his hand and gives a grunt. He doesn't move away - might like the heat.

"So you've got plans, Dickie Bennett. Me working with the family? At the very least, I can't say I won't enjoy the sight of their faces when they figure out what the introduction means."

Dickie laughs harder and doesn't stop. Raylan stays dry-voiced as he says, "And now your plans have gone right the one fucking time, you'll be absolutely impossible from here out."

"Damn right! Ain't that the best thing for me to say from now on? Damn right," he hoots out, still laughing.

They stand there, a little team, enjoying a shared heat and finding a new equilibrium under settling dust. They're going to stay this way until someone else comes and breaks this moment, because as far as Dickie's concerned, it is enough. Raylan, though, is not just enjoying the company. He's also waiting.

"Hell," Raylan says finally. "You're actually keeping your mouth shut about the plans, too. Now I really am worried."

It's a pity Dickie can't do that glint of mid-air grin Raylan used to do all the time, familiar from his earliest memories - there was nothing like it for looking sharp. But with the teeth at his disposal, Dickie can make up for it otherwise.


End file.
